Iraq Cabinet Demands Turks Leave Kurdish Area in North

Wednesday

Feb 27, 2008 at 4:44 AM

Turkish forces continued to battle Kurdish rebel bases on northern Iraq, prompting a condemnation from Baghdad.

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government on Tuesday condemned Turkey’s raids into northern Iraq and demanded that Turkey withdraw its troops, as fighting continued for a sixth day between Turkish forces and Kurdish rebels.

“The council expresses its rejection and condemnation to the Turkish military incursion which is considered a violation to the Iraqi sovereignty,” the Iraqi cabinet said in a statement. “The cabinet stresses that unilateral military action is not acceptable and threatens good relations between the two neighbors.”

The semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government also condemned the raids in a special session on Tuesday.

“The Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan is a violation of Iraqi sovereignty,” Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the Department of Foreign Relations of the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in an interview on Tuesday.

The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, defended the operations against the rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist organization. In a televised speech on Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan said the military action was “not aimed at northern Iraq but only the terror organization,” the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency reported.

He said that the Turkish government was “in communication with” the United States and the Iraqi government, and that Turkey was grateful for “the strong, cooperative attitude of the Iraqi administration” and for “intelligence support and cooperation” from the United States.

Turkish television showed troops slogging through heavy snow in the rugged Kurdistan mountains. Casualty figures from Turkish sources and sources for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., have varied widely. Turkey has reported killing more than 150 rebels, while confirming the deaths of 19 Turkish soldiers. The P.K.K. contends it has lost only a handful of fighters, while killing 81 Turkish soldiers.

The P.K.K. demands autonomy for Kurds in southern Turkey and has been attacking Turkish soil from Kurdish bases in Turkey and northern Iraq since 1984. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict.

In an interview on Tuesday, a P.K.K. spokesman expressed confidence that the rebels had the backing of the Kurdish regional government, which has repeatedly demanded the removal of Turkish troops. But the spokesman, Ahmad Danes, said the rebel group felt betrayed by the United States, which has said Turkey warned it of the raid. He said the Kurdish rebels kept the mountainous north of Iraq free of insurgent terrorists.

“The U.S.A. must not stand against Kurdish rights,” he said.

In other violence in the north, an explosion on a crowded bus traveling to the Syrian border from Mosul killed at least nine passengers on Tuesday morning, Iraqi officials said.

The source of the attack was unclear. Military officials said a passenger detonated a suicide vest on the bus, but bus company employees attributed the explosion to a roadside bomb.

The attack occurred about 500 yards from an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Tmerat, 50 miles west of Mosul, where scores of recruits routinely gather at an Iraqi Army base, said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The bomber was probably trying to attack them, he said, and the bomb may have exploded prematurely.

United States military pressure — with the alignment of some Sunni tribes against the insurgency and a cease-fire by Shiite militias in southern and central Iraq — has pushed the remaining insurgents north to Mosul, United States and Iraqi officials say.

The city has been the scene of fierce fighting in recent months, and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, promised a “decisive” battle with insurgents there after dozens of people were killed and more than 200 wounded in an explosion a month ago when Iraqi soldiers entered a booby-trapped building.

In other violence, a Mosul policeman was killed and two others wounded by a car bomb, Iraqi police sources said.

In Kirkuk, the district police said two Awakening Council members had been killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen. The police also confirmed that a roadside bomb had killed two civilians. And an Iraqi security forces source said an Iraqi Army major had been killed in clashes with elements of Al Qaeda.

In Tuz Khurmato, Lt. Col. Abdullah al-Bayati said attackers killed one soldier and kidnapped one of his relatives.

The American military issued a statement confirming that it had killed seven insurgents in a clash near Khan Bani Sa’ad in Diyala Province.

Also, the Iraqi Ministry of Information said gunmen had robbed a Health Ministry building in Al Waziriya in north Baghdad, taking six million Iraqi dinars, about $5,000.

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